Teaching online - anyone find it better for student learning?

[ciao_yall]

I prefer to teach online (English at a CC) as long as it's asynchronous. It's definitely a different type of learning and engagement, but I'd match my online students against someone else's face-to-face students any day in terms of meeting course outcomes.

That said, effective online teaching isn't easy, and it's not for everyone or every field. I'm not exactly Mr. Charismatic in the classroom, so online teaching plays to my strengths.

Still, there is a difference between achieving the outcomes and engaging in that deeper learning and connection.

I think this is a good point. Things I can do well at my best: Try to transmit my energy and excitement for material to students. (Key part of this, Remember to have energy and excitement.) Mix discussion and lectures together into something that can  be interactive and engaging.

Things I don't do well: Organization, CMS Management, Tight Lectures that never get sidetracked

Agree on this. Finding a balance between getting the key points of the lesson across and engaging students on the issues/tangents that really get them plugged in. You can "read the room" in class, but Zoom? Discussion boards?

As sinenomine beautifully put it...

I think it's building community within the course. For the ones I teach, that entails assignments that ask students to curate and share knowledge related to the topics we're covering, which leads to their developing a shared discourse and team spirit, along with individual reflections on their learning and it's future applicability.

Other than discussion boards and responses, I'm not sure how else to do that. And I do like when they occasionally get engaged with one another and have lively discussions but that is rare on a discussion board.

[marshwiggle]

I prefer to teach online (English at a CC) as long as it's asynchronous. It's definitely a different type of learning and engagement, but I'd match my online students against someone else's face-to-face students any day in terms of meeting course outcomes.

That said, effective online teaching isn't easy, and it's not for everyone or every field. I'm not exactly Mr. Charismatic in the classroom, so online teaching plays to my strengths.

Still, there is a difference between achieving the outcomes and engaging in that deeper learning and connection.

If that's the case, the outcomes are lacking. (Or only the best students are expected to achieve that "deeper learning and connection".) Vague expectations allow people to flatter themselves that they've achieved them without having to have any concrete, objective criteria that others can use to verify the claim.

[jerseyjay]

I taught online asynchronous history courses for more than a decade before Covid. Some things to keep in mind:
-Organization is really key.
-Patience and flexibility are quite important.
-The course works well for students who are motivated, have regular computer access, and have basic academic skills.
-The course does not work well for students who are academically weak, have connectivity problems, or who are not very motivated.
-The social experience of the classroom is hard to make up.
-The role of the professor in an online course is very different;
-Teaching online is not for all professors.
-Online courses are not for all students in all subjects and there is often a high attrition rate.


The last two points are important given the massive switch to online in the Covid period. Suddenly all courses were switched to online, we all had to teach or take courses online, and it didn't work. Many people got a very bad impression of online education.

As a student I have taken about eight three-credit undergraduate courses over the years. Most have gone well. This is because the professors have taken the time to make the course work; I have been interested in the material; and the subject matter works well for me. I have mainly taken English literature courses, and I have done all the reading for the courses. I am sure that other students have not done the reading and have done worse.

I took a course a foreign-language course focused on translation in a language I already had some experience in. This worked well because it comprised translation exercises. I am taking a basic language course now in a new language and am finding it frustrating. The actual work is the same as a classroom course--mainly grammar and vocabulary exercises from the text book--but there is no real focus on speaking or communicating. The instructor does have weekly (optional) Zoom sessions, which is useful, but I do not find learning a foreign language through an asynchronous course the best idea.

[the_geneticist]

The "secret sauce" is that an online course must be purposely developed to be an online course.  It's not just "put your syllabus online, record your lectures, and be prepared for cheating!".

It also has to be a class that has learning goals that can be achieved online (history - yes!; economics - yes!; studio arts - no!). 

I taught online asynchronous history courses for more than a decade before Covid. Some things to keep in mind:
-Organization is really key.
-Patience and flexibility are quite important.
-The course works well for students who are motivated, have regular computer access, and have basic academic skills.
-The course does not work well for students who are academically weak, have connectivity problems, or who are not very motivated.
-The social experience of the classroom is hard to make up.
-The role of the professor in an online course is very different;
-Teaching online is not for all professors.
-Online courses are not for all students in all subjects and there is often a high attrition rate.

[Aster]

I've had the luxury of being able to compare assessment results between fully online course and regular courses of the exact same type, during the same semester.

Identical assessments. Identical lessons. Identical textbooks. Identical support resources.

I did this for four different course types, over a couple of years. And except for one semester where I cut the assessment in half for the online courses, the mean scores for the online courses have always been lower than their matching regular class counterparts. Also lower in the online courses was attendance/lecture readership. I experimented with both asynchronous and synchronous online courses. The worst student participation and overall academic performance was with the asynchronous class types.

So... using "contact hours" as intended seems to be important. Either sitting in a chair, or sitting in a chair remotely in real-time, a professor can at least assure that a student is receiving the minimum contact hours of classroom time each week.

[marshwiggle]

I've had the luxury of being able to compare assessment results between fully online course and regular courses of the exact same type, during the same semester.

Identical assessments. Identical lessons. Identical textbooks. Identical support resources.

I did this for four different course types, over a couple of years. And except for one semester where I cut the assessment in half for the online courses, the mean scores for the online courses have always been lower than their matching regular class counterparts. Also lower in the online courses was attendance/lecture readership. I experimented with both asynchronous and synchronous online courses. The worst student participation and overall academic performance was with the asynchronous class types.

So... using "contact hours" as intended seems to be important. Either sitting in a chair, or sitting in a chair remotely in real-time, a professor can at least assure that a student is receiving the minimum contact hours of classroom time each week.

It's not clear that "identical" is actually what is best. For instance, "identical support resources" obvious can't include time chatting with the instructor before or after class, such as happens face-to-face. And I'm not sure what "student participation" looks like in an asynchronous class.(At least in any way that's comparable to an in-person class; any metric would have to be primarily geared to one, and at best adapted for the other.)

There are absolutely things that are better (or even possible) face-to-face. But there are also things that are better (or even possible) asynchronously. I now have every course hybrid in some way or other, for that reason. Because of things that are only possible one way, there's no way that I could fairly and objectively compare them overall.

[Aster]

I've had the luxury of being able to compare assessment results between fully online course and regular courses of the exact same type, during the same semester.

Identical assessments. Identical lessons. Identical textbooks. Identical support resources.

I did this for four different course types, over a couple of years. And except for one semester where I cut the assessment in half for the online courses, the mean scores for the online courses have always been lower than their matching regular class counterparts. Also lower in the online courses was attendance/lecture readership. I experimented with both asynchronous and synchronous online courses. The worst student participation and overall academic performance was with the asynchronous class types.

So... using "contact hours" as intended seems to be important. Either sitting in a chair, or sitting in a chair remotely in real-time, a professor can at least assure that a student is receiving the minimum contact hours of classroom time each week.

It's not clear that "identical" is actually what is best. For instance, "identical support resources" obvious can't include time chatting with the instructor before or after class, such as happens face-to-face. And I'm not sure what "student participation" looks like in an asynchronous class.(At least in any way that's comparable to an in-person class; any metric would have to be primarily geared to one, and at best adapted for the other.)

There are absolutely things that are better (or even possible) face-to-face. But there are also things that are better (or even possible) asynchronously. I now have every course hybrid in some way or other, for that reason. Because of things that are only possible one way, there's no way that I could fairly and objectively compare them overall.

Sure. Mixing things up may be more dynamic. It's just harder to rigorously evaluate the treatment groups against one another if the test variables are fuzzy.

[marshwiggle]

I've had the luxury of being able to compare assessment results between fully online course and regular courses of the exact same type, during the same semester.

Identical assessments. Identical lessons. Identical textbooks. Identical support resources.

I did this for four different course types, over a couple of years. And except for one semester where I cut the assessment in half for the online courses, the mean scores for the online courses have always been lower than their matching regular class counterparts. Also lower in the online courses was attendance/lecture readership. I experimented with both asynchronous and synchronous online courses. The worst student participation and overall academic performance was with the asynchronous class types.

So... using "contact hours" as intended seems to be important. Either sitting in a chair, or sitting in a chair remotely in real-time, a professor can at least assure that a student is receiving the minimum contact hours of classroom time each week.

It's not clear that "identical" is actually what is best. For instance, "identical support resources" obvious can't include time chatting with the instructor before or after class, such as happens face-to-face. And I'm not sure what "student participation" looks like in an asynchronous class.(At least in any way that's comparable to an in-person class; any metric would have to be primarily geared to one, and at best adapted for the other.)

There are absolutely things that are better (or even possible) face-to-face. But there are also things that are better (or even possible) asynchronously. I now have every course hybrid in some way or other, for that reason. Because of things that are only possible one way, there's no way that I could fairly and objectively compare them overall.

Sure. Mixing things up may be more dynamic. It's just harder to rigorously evaluate the treatment groups against one another if the test variables are fuzzy.

But it's not clear exactly what the test variables should be to make a useful and fair comparison. Something like performance in a subsequent course might be the right thing, since it wouldn't constrain details about the different formats so they could each be optimized.

[larryc]

I prefer teaching in the classroom because I like human interaction. But I am pretty sure that my online students are learning more, from the quality of their work. Of course they may be a self-selecting group.